Concerns Over Telehealth Fraud; Fear of Dying Alone

• Access to telehealth has ballooned in recent weeks, allowing providers to continue to care for their patients remotely and get paid. But, Fred Schulte writes, some have expressed concern that the rise of telehealth could lead to billing fraud ~ Coronavirus Fuels Explosive Growth In Telehealth ― And Concern About Fraud (Kaiser Health News)
• “A seemingly simple request” — for families to see their critically ill loved ones before they die — “has become an ethical and health care dilemma” during the pandemic, Glenn K. Wakam, M and colleagues write ~ Not Dying Alone — Modern Compassionate Care in the Covid-19 Pandemic (New England Journal of Medicine)
• Asitha Jayawardena, MD, MPH, wants to “help fight the battle against this invisible enemy” but also wonders how she can protect herself from catching the disease ~ Waiting for Something Positive (New England Journal of Medicine)
• JoNel Aleccia and Laura Ungar explore how the pandemic is completely changing care for pregnant women and their infants ~ Born Into A Pandemic: Virus Complicates Births For Moms And Babies (Kaiser Health News/People)
• How do we contain the spread of coronavirus? Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, and Carlos del Rio, MD, explore the need for a coordinated effort to expand testing and perform widespread contact-tracing ~ From Mitigation to Containment of the COVID-19 Pandemic (JAMA)
• “Physicians’ diagnostic and management decisions determine the success or failure of the care we provide,” according to Darren B. Taichman, MD, PhD, and colleagues, who discuss why providers need to continually hone their decision making skills ~ Clinical Decision Making: Nurturing Our Core Skills (Annals of Internal Medicine)
• Deborah Schrag, MD, MPH, and colleagues detail how the COVID-19 crisis has changed cancer care and highlighted patients’ concerns that their “needs will be overlooked or marginalized” ~ Oncology Practice During the COVID-19 Pandemic (JAMA)

Fred N. Pelzman, MD, of Weill Cornell Internal Medicine Associates and weekly blogger for MedPage Today, follows what’s going on in the world of primary care medicine. Pelzman’s Picks is a compilation of links to blogs, articles, tweets, journal studies, opinion pieces, and news briefs related to primary care that caught his eye.